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Fremont kicks off negotiations with the A's

By Lisa Fernandez
Mercury News

Fremont officials met with A's owner Lew Wolff and his team Thursday morning in the first kick-off session to determine how to bring a $500 million ballpark stadium and surrounding retail and housing units to the city in about five years.

City Manager Fred Diaz said the 3 1/2-hour meeting at City Hall put in place a process for moving forward in negotiations with the unprecedented project, which the A's have vowed to pay for with private money.

The city and A's plan to meet twice a month for up to six months; the next meeting is Jan. 11. And a public work session with the city council will follow soon after that.

"There wasn't a whole lot new that we learned from the meeting other than we know we're ready to go now," Diaz said. "This meeting served as breaking the ice. We'll know a lot more in the month."

Aside from Diaz, there were six people, including city attorney Harvey Levine and two sports consultants representing Fremont. Wolff was accompanied by his son, Keith, an attorney and a Cisco employee. Cisco sold the A's the 143-acre parcel of land off Interstate Highway 880 where the ballpark village would be located in exchange for naming the stadium, Cisco Field.

Diaz said "nothing substantive" was discussed, and there was no talk of how the A's might take care of parking, traffic and noise issues if the project materializes. There was also no discussion of a Nov. 21 A's letter to Fremont in which team officials offered the possibility of Fremont one day owning the land and stadium, which many see would be a tax break for the team.

A's spokesman Jim Young did not attend the meeting but said Wolff has an "ambitious schedule" to complete his vision and will move "as quickly as possible" to break ground, though he wouldn't commit to any specific timetable. Young downplayed the significance of Thursday's meeting saying, "We're going to have a ton of meetings. And Lew is an excellent communicator and will be in continuous dialogue with Fremont, but we can't comment on every little nuance of the project, it doesn't do service to anybody."

Other than the A's being more flush with cash than most developers, so in a better position to pay to expedite certain processes, such as hiring consultants to complete timely environmental studies, Diaz said the process is very typical.

"Sure, there is a lot at stake and this is a bigger project," Diaz said. "But these preliminary discussions are pretty much the same thing. We were very, very clear: We are going to deal with the A's the same way we do with any other developer."

Contact Lisa Fernandez at lfernandez@mercurynews.com or (510) 790-7313.